


Ave Imperatrix, morituri te salutant

by Aesoleucian



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Gore, Pre-Canon, WARNING at the end there's a pretty graphic description of parasitic wasps and fire, a bad death., once upon a time gertrude still had a heart, so I guess:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 09:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16951737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Two of Gertrude's assistants are dead, there's a new Head of Institute, and everything has become so much more complicated.





	Ave Imperatrix, morituri te salutant

**Author's Note:**

> Let me go over your good gifts  
> That crown you queen;  
> A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts  
> Each week, Faustine.

Gertrude does not storm up to the Head of Institute’s office, but it’s a close thing. Keane must have had a successor in mind already, perhaps even approved by the board, before she went with them to France. It takes a lot of the satisfaction out of her death but leaves all the guilt, which she’s sure Keane would be pleased about.

But why Keane picked _this_ idiot she has no idea.

The door to the office is already open when she arrives, so that she can see he actually has his feet up on the desk. On this occasion it seems he’s restrained himself from wearing a _band tee shirt_ , but the aura of persistent scruffiness still follows him. It’s an insult to the position. Keane may have been evil by any technical definition, but at least she had dignity. Gertrude isn’t here to waste time insulting him, though. It would be counterproductive, no matter how much he deserves it; if she can gain his trust she can use his position.

“Congratulations on your promotion, Mr. Bouchard,” she says when he looks up from pretending to read a report.

“Thanks,” he says. “You need something, or did you just come to congratulate me?”

“I do need something, yes. I spoke to Ms. Lane in human resources this morning about severance for archival assistants, and she indicated that you needed to sign off on it.”

“Severance? You mean for Mark’s family? I’m quite sure I already signed something for them.”

“For Janet Butler.”

His incredulous eyebrows pull his face up to look at her. “Janet Butler is fine. Why would you need to fire her? You’ve only got the one assistant left, I wouldn’t go about getting rid of her if I were you.”

“Archival assistants are more trouble than they are worth,” says Gertrude. “She isn’t necessary, and I should think you would be happy to save the Archives a bit of money.”

“No, no, we have plenty. You wouldn’t believe the kind of donors we’ve got. Hire a new assistant. Hire four new assistants!”

“Is it your official recommendation, then, that I keep Janet on?”

“Yes. I don’t know why you’re pretending you don’t need assistants, but it’s stupid. You’ve got a month to make some new hires. All right, Gertrude?”

“Certainly, Elias,” she says. If he isn’t going to dignify her with her title, then she won’t use his either. She turns on her heel and stalks down the hall, having changed her mind: Bouchard is not the type she can mold. He’s too self-important, too in love with his own power already. He can’t possibly be much older than twenty, and already he seems to think he owns the place.

 

Gertrude sets Janet to researching a statement she’s already confident is a complete fabrication and continues with her own research. She’s already gone through every possible lead on Eric’s disappearance except the one she’s afraid will explain it, but she could no more bring herself to talk to that woman than to believe Eric called her his fiancée. Still, if she is responsible for his death, it means Gertrude isn’t. Or at least it makes her _less_ responsible.

She dials from memory. Once, years and years ago, Gertrude believed she could change her. Never admired her, but—oh, to hell with it all. Gertrude doesn’t have to admit anything, even to herself.

“Hello, Gertrude,” says the sly voice on the other end of the line, although she should have no way of knowing who’s calling.

“What happened to Eric,” says Gertrude. Perhaps if she is rude enough, if she is short enough, this conversation can be over in only a few words.

“No hello for your old friend? Wouldn’t you rather talk over tea?”

“No, I’d rather hear you tell me you killed him and then get on with my life.”

She keeps talking, as if she didn’t hear Gertrude at all. “It really makes one wonder about your commitment to investigating his death, that you waited a whole year to talk to me. One would _think_ I’d be the first person you’d want to ask.”

“He is dead, then.”

She laughs. “Of course he’s dead! Did you really entertain any possibility that didn’t end with my knife in his throat?” She lowers her voice. “If so, you were right. I poisoned him. Much less of a mess that way. And I have enough messes to deal with these days.”

A torrent of angry words sticks in Gertrude’s throat, all trying to come up at once and none of them allowable. _He loved you_ , she could say, _he really loved you._ Or, _How dare you come after one of mine?_ At last, she’s only able to let one of them out: “Why?”

“Needed to practice my bookbinding. And I’d already gotten what I wanted from him.” She pauses, but Gertrude can’t loosen anything more from the blockade. “What did I want from him, you ask? Come visit and find out.”

“ _What did you want from him?_ ”

“An heir. Gertrude, that’s very unsporting of you and if you do it again I shall have to hang up. Babies are far more trouble than they’re worth, anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it. Most days I want to smother the little beast.”

Gertrude slams the receiver back into its cradle, feeling sick. Partly to imagine any child being raised by Mary Keay… and partly because she knows she isn’t going to do anything about it. Nor can she escape into her work, because for the first time in months the Plague of Locusts isn’t hanging over her head, and she has no other research direction. So she spends who-knows-how-long with her head in her hands, staring at the grain of her desk as if concentrating hard enough can empty her mind of everyone she has failed to save. Everyone she will continue to fail to save.

 

-

 

His head feels like it’s splitting open. But slowly, day by day, like someone is trying to coax his skull to grow into the shape of a cup. It doesn’t quite hurt but it’s a constant low-level terror because he doesn’t understand why it’s happening. And he’s been having… dreams. Dreams more vivid than waking reality, where he’s standing in a brightly lit tower surrounded by distant windows, and he knows that behind every one of them is a person staring at him, waiting for him to crack. If he could just _see_ any one of them he would have some weapon, a weakness to dig at. But he can’t see anything.

He can’t _see_ anything—

He wakes up, as he always does, trying to stare through the wall of his flat at the man sleeping on the other side.

 

-

 

Gertrude’s first test of the new Head is to hire new assistants so utterly incompetent that he has no choice but to fire them. This virtually rules out transfers from the library, so she asks human resources for all of the résumés received in the last two months. She goes through them, setting aside the ones with no relevant experience or education, but who don’t sound too insufferable. On Thursday she brings her choices to Bouchard, who takes all of thirty seconds to skim them before scribbling two signatures and telling her to bring them to HR. As if that’s her job. She drops them pointedly in his outbox and turns on her heel, saying, “I am not your secretary.”

One of the new hires starts the following week, a girl named Annabelle Suzuki who’s just dropped out of the philosophy program at New City College. Gertrude dislikes her as soon as she wanders uncertainly in wearing a tee shirt several sizes too large for her and comical skateboarding shoes. “Oh, hey! You must be Gertrude Robinson!” She holds out her hand. Gertrude stares at it until she puts it down. “Er. Right. Well, I’m here for work, so, what d’you want me to do? You said on the phone I’d be sort of a re—”

“Janet will instruct you as to your duties. Do try not to distract each other,” she says, looking pointedly at Janet.

“Course not,” says Janet. “C’mon, Annabelle. I’ll show you the assistants’ office. It’s just me right now as everyone else has gone on to—greener pastures…”

When they’ve disappeared around the corner Gertrude begins massaging her forehead, wondering how best to find out what it is Bouchard actually wants. She isn’t sure he knows, himself, which will make that more complicated. On the other hand it’s possible that Keane passed on her goals before she went, and perhaps the nature of that passing-on is what Gertrude should be interested in. There’s something abnormal about the Head of Institute position. She can’t quite see it yet, but she will.

In the meantime she goes to the archive and misfiles some statements, because it makes her feel like she’s doing _something_.

The week after that David Jackson shows up to work. Annabelle is already living down to Gertrude’s expectations, slacking on the job and going for long lunches and getting lost. She and David will probably encourage each other; he seems to have applied to the Institute on a dare, and was so surprised when she called him that he nearly refused the offer. So long as they don’t drive Janet mad, Gertrude doesn’t care what they do.

On Wednesday afternoon Janet turns up in Gertrude’s office clutching an armful of statements and looking ready to commit homicide. “They never shut up,” she says through gritted teeth. “Can I work in here?”

There are plenty of places Janet could choose to work, like the interview rooms or the desk in the archive. Gertrude wavers. “Why here?” she asks.

“What?”

“My office is not the only quiet room in the Magnus Institute.”

“Oh, er, I suppose not. If it’ll bother you I can go.”

“I don’t have any feelings one way or the other.”

“…right. That’s Gertrude-speak for _you’re annoying but I’m slightly too nice to say so_ , isn’t it? Sorry, I’ll go.”

She leaves, and Gertrude feels strangely hollow, like she’s given something away but doesn’t know what. It eases a little when she realizes Janet will have to come in periodically to hand her a statement or an interview she’s asked for.

“They’re actually complaining you haven’t given them anything to do,” Janet says, leaning against the wall by the desk.

“I told them to pull and read every statement involving a kidnapping. That should keep them occupied for months.”

“Okay, but you have _been_ in the British schooling system? People know pointless busywork when they see it. They know you’re not going to check on their work and they know you don’t care whether they do it. I know fooling _them_ isn’t the point, but they’re liable to complain about it to Elias.”

“I hope they do,” says Gertrude. “Need I remind you that the point of this exercise is to find out the length of our leash?”

Janet looks away and shrugs, momentarily a sulky teenager. “It just doesn’t seem fair to them. I’ve had friends who weren’t smart in school, I know what it’s like. Just one more person who doesn’t believe you can do anything right.”

Gertrude hears the second, hidden indictment in what Janet isn’t saying: is it better to treat people as disposable and save their lives than to respect them at the risk of caring when they die? Or perhaps that voice is too philosophical to be Janet, and it’s only Gertrude’s own. “If I train them to be competent, how will Bouchard be convinced to fire them?”

“Ugh,” says Janet, and turns for the door. “Espionage!”

But whatever she means by that, she doesn’t stay to explain it.

Gertrude brings a book in the next day and spends six hours reading malaria historiography. Whenever one of the assistants tries to talk to her she points to the sign on her desk that reads _On holiday. All requests and complaints should go through the Head of Institute._

 

-

 

Instead of sleeping, instead of dreaming that dream for the twenty-fourth time, he stays awake listening to his upstairs neighbors.  If he concentrates hard on their muffled voices he can almost make out what they’re saying. Yes… _there_.

Oh. They’re watching the football.

It’s not enough. Why isn’t it enough?

He gets up abruptly and grabs his keys from the table. Fuck it. If he can’t sleep he’s going to go stare at people in a bar, where at least he can get drunk and maybe even laid. If this works, he’s never sleeping again.

 

-

 

Gertrude stops in the doorway of the Head of Institute’s office, staring. Bouchard raises his head as if it’s made of lead and looks up at her from deeply shadowed eyes. He hasn’t combed his hair, nor, she suspects, changed his shirt in the past few days.

“Sit,” he says. She stands behind the chair that faces his desk and folds her hands primly on the back. He makes a tiny noise of exasperation and sits up straighter. It doesn’t do anything to make him look less like hell. “Your performance the last part of this quarter has been…” He glances down at the file in front of him. “…absolute shit. I can only assume you’re doing it specifically to annoy me.”

“Yes,” says Gertrude. It’s so satisfying to watch the disbelief crawl onto his face. “And the reason is that you do not have the power to stop me. Let’s make a deal.”

“I’m not sure,” he snarls, “that you get what it means to be Head of the Magnus Institute.”

She laughs. “And you do? Having held the position for all of a month? Right now you’re nothing to what Keane was. I can make a lot of trouble for you, if I so choose.”

He rolls his eyes. “You have demands, then.”

“Fire all three of my assistants.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can and you will,” she snaps, leaning forward. “If not—”

“I am telling you,” he says over her. “I cannot. Do it. I don’t know how.” She stares at him, trying to look through his eyes and into his skull to find the lie. “Whatever makes these contracts binding, I have nothing to do with it. There isn’t a procedure for firing archivists. There’s no form.”

“Then I suggest you create one. You never know until you try.”

He gives her the implacable stare of a schoolboy who’s been caught cribbing someone else’s homework and knows he can’t avoid punishment. She takes this as a _yes_ and leaves.

She’s a little surprised when he actually does have the termination forms sent down to her office. It looks official enough to satisfy a normal institution. Whether it is official enough to satisfy the Magnus Institute remains to be seen, so she summons Janet.

“Do you still want to quit?” she asks.

“Hullo to you too,” says Janet. Gertrude raises her eyebrows, and she sighs. “I don’t know. I’m sort of resigned to it. It’s not that bad working here, and the pay’s great for what the work is.”

“This is not a hypothetical, Janet. I have a termination form made by the Head of Institute, and if anything will allow you to leave, it is this.”

Janet slowly reaches out to take the form from her, and scans it. “This will work?”

“I’m unsure,” Gertrude admits. “Before yesterday Bouchard did not know of a way to fire archivists. I told him to find one.”

“And he just did?” says Janet vaguely, flipping the page over. “You’re not exactly best mates. He just want to get rid of us?”

“I promised him my cooperation.”

Janet finally looks up, disbelieving. “You really—” And stops. She looks down, and her brow furrows. “Gertrude, you do know what happened to Marcus wasn’t your fault. He chose to do it, to save you. He was just… being a stupid bloody hero.”

“He would not have had the opportunity if he worked anywhere else,” says Gertrude. Her throat is threatening to close up again. Damn it all.

“Lots of people do stupid bullshit all the time, and they choose to do it. It’s just—when you’re a fireman or whatever you know what you’re signing up for. We just need—better liability wavers.”

“There is no informed consent if no-one can believe what they read.”

“You’re impossible! I’ll sign the damn form, but if it works I’m coming straight back here. You fire David and Annabelle, they don’t know what they’re in for and I don’t want them to. But you need me.”

Gertrude just gives her a look, because she is tired of having to say out loud that she doesn’t need anyone’s help.

“Oh, don’t give me that _I don’t need anyone’s help_ look. If you’re really going up against Elias Head-of-Institute Bouchard then it’s a bit stupid to do it on your own, isn’t it? _Everyone_ else in the Institute works for him. I’m honestly not sure what he can actually _do_ , but. Y’know. It’s good to have backup.”

“It may be a moot point anyway,” says Gertrude, as she refuses to entertain this conversation.

Janet shakes her head and signs. The next day she doesn’t show up. David asks where she’s gone, sounding slightly desperate, and Gertrude tells him she’s taking care of her mother for the week.

“She didn’t tell me her mum was sick,” says David. “That’s awful. Um, only, it was normally Janet… who… told us what to do?”

He looks so anxious that Gertrude gives in. It’s not going to matter soon anyway. Either he’ll be gone in the next two weeks, or she’ll be stuck with him and he’ll need training up. “Yes, go and find Annabelle,” she says. “I don’t want to have to say everything twice.”

 

-

 

He hasn’t slept in over a week and he feels _fine_. Great, even. He’s been reading all about what happens when a person doesn’t sleep, so he was well prepared for the hallucinations. First they were strange little flickery movements in the corners of his eyes; then the details of things began to blur and shift until people’s faces no longer looked like faces, when he could bear to look at them. Then he started to hear voices that couldn’t possibly be coming from nearby, although they seemed to be having perfectly lucid conversations.

And then everything became… very clear. Translucent, actually, as if he can see through the top inch of everything around him and underneath is what it really is, the mechanics of it, the ticking gears of the universe. Even _people_.

He doesn’t want to stop seeing this. He can use it. That just means he can never sleep again, which is fine. If he was going to die of sleep deprivation, it would have been days ago. He’ll be fine.

 

-

 

When Janet returns it’s late in the morning that she stumbles into Gertrude’s office and leans heavily against the wall, as if she barely managed to leave her house at all.

“Good Lord, sit down. You look like you’re about to faint.”

“It didn’t work,” Janet mumbles. She attempts to sit down but misses the chair, so she just lies on the floor looking up at Gertrude, who is peering over the edge of her desk. “It was so… I thought it would be okay and it would pass but it just got worse. I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“You are _not_ going to throw up on my carpet,” says Gertrude. She feels a little hysterical with the last of her assistants _swooning_ on the floor, perhaps on the edge of a worse death than Eric (no death she can imagine is worse than what Marcus suffered). If Janet is sick from not coming in to work then maybe—maybe she just needs some work to do. Gertrude takes a deep breath and releases it as steadily as she can manage; she tries to make her voice steady and certain too. “You are going to take notes on this statement—mental notes, if you must—and then report to me what research needs to be done to confirm or debunk it.” She drops a file on Janet’s chest, one of the ones from the First World War that have been sitting in a pile on her desk.

Janet slowly reaches up to take the file. Her hands tremble as she holds it over her face and opens it. Gertrude forces herself to stop watching and sits back down to return to the one she was reading, which so far is a lengthy reminiscence about a ‘friend’ who sacrificed himself for the writer. Five straight pages of drivel about the man’s tender heart and love for music, and finally the writer is getting around to talking about an apparition that appeared in the smoke above the trenches when there’s a shifting from the other side of the desk.

“C’n I borrow a pen and a bit of paper?” says Janet’s weak voice. She seems to be improving, because she’s able to reach up and take what Gertrude hands to her. She props herself against the wall and starts taking notes over her knees. Gertrude watches her for a moment over the top of her own folder, but it seems that Janet is content to do her work. Perhaps it is helping. Color seems to be returning to her face, bit by bit. So Gertrude continues with her own notes until the sound of footsteps in the hallways causes Janet to scramble to her feet and hastily put the notes down on Gertrude’s desk. “There, that’s about all I could think of. Let me know if it’s good enough and I’ll go start looking for records in the library.”

“Are you’re sure you’re well enough to be walking—” Gertrude starts, but David practically skids into view, cutting her off.

“Janet! You’re back! How’s your mum?”

“Er,” says Janet. “She’s all right. Now.” She glances at Gertrude as Annabelle appears from around the edge of the door.

“There is something the both of you need to know,” says Gertrude, noting the relief that washes over Janet’s face. “I am beginning to think Bouchard is simply not capable of terminating employees at all. Nor will you find yourselves able to quit. In short, death is the only way for an archivist to leave the Magnus Institute.”

“Hey,” says Annabelle, “what.”

“The Institute has a power that prevents employees from leaving," says Gertrude. "I don't know how I could be more clear.”

“Begging your pardon, but that sounds like total bullshit.”

“It’s true,” Janet says. “I’ve just tried a second time. All it got me was sick almost to death—you should have seen me when I got in this morning, I could barely walk. When Gertrude says Elias can’t let us leave, she’s not making it up. We tested it. Assuming he actually tried, anyway.”

“Er, so, if death is the only way to leave…”

“In the twenty years I have worked here, two of my assistants have died in the line of duty. Perhaps three, depending on whether Jakob’s death really was a simple automobile accident. Three others have transferred to the library and still work there. If you want to stay safe, the library is your best bet. But again it needs approval from the Head, which he may be reluctant to give at the moment.”

“This is mental,” says Annabelle in a mild voice, as if pointing out a recent change in the train schedule. “Sorry, but, what could _possibly_ be dangerous about being an archival assistant?”

“The stuff we’re investigating is real!” Janet nearly shouts. “You haven’t gone out on assignment yet, but there’s people out there who really don’t want to be researched, and we’ve got to do it anyway because of some kind of stupid black magic. There’s people with real magic powers, and our Head of Institute is always one of them, and some of them will want to kill you just because you work here. If you really don’t believe me, why don’t we go out next week? We’ve had a statement about a bunch of people who’ve been seen walking through locked doors at night, maybe you want to go ask them how they do it? Because we have to find out. We have to.”

David stares at her with wide eyes, cowed by her ferocity. Annabelle is frowning as if she wants to argue, but she too is quiet.

“Why don’t you take them somewhere less likely to get them killed?” says Gertrude in the silence. She’s rather going to enjoy seeing what happens when her new assistants start taking their work seriously, but that does mean they need to live to do so. “The poisoning cases, perhaps.” At least there isn’t likely to be anyone watching that one. That sort doesn’t hang around.

“Yes ma’am,” says Janet. “Monday fine? Right. Pack a lunch or whatever on Monday, ‘cos we’re going to Hounslow.”

 

Later in the day Bouchard stops by. It’s the first time Gertrude has actually seen him outside his office since he became Head of Institute. He doesn’t look at all like he did last week; there’s a spring in his step, as it were, his hair is pristine, and for the first time ever he’s wearing a dress shirt.  “Knock knock,” he says, instead of knocking.

“You failed,” she says.

“Why did you think I came here? I’m interested to know whether you can justify continuing to be a nuisance, seeing as your demands are actually impossible to meet.” There’s something different about his pale eyes. Normally he prefers to pretend he can’t see whoever he’s talking to, as if he thinks it makes him ‘cool.’ But now his eyes are focused on her, and he looks thoughtful. “Shall I give you a couple minutes to come up with something?”

“No, you idiot boy, I want you to try harder. Lord knows Keane must have seen _something_ in you, and it wasn’t your sweet tractable nature. I’ve been hoping you might have a brain hidden somewhere under all that swagger.”

Bouchard’s mouth twists angrily. “You know what, old woman? I’d like to see you try to be enough of a nuisance that I actually have to care.”

“Certainly,” says Gertrude. “Now please vacate my office.”

“Mind that whatever you’re planning doesn’t get anyone else hurt,” he says over his shoulder as he saunters out, hands in pockets. “I’d hate for anyone to get caught in the crossfire.”

Gertrude’s grip tightens on her pen, but otherwise she ignores him.

 

-

 

He understands a lot of things he didn’t before. He understands Keane’s notes, which she left in a secret drawer of the desk in a locked box whose combination she didn’t tell anyone. He understands how to beat the dream of the inverted Panopticon, from a history that never was. And he understands a bit more about his greatest foe for the moment: Gertrude Robinson.

He already went looking for the low-hanging fruit, her badly-concealed guilt about Marcus Link’s death. It’s a crack, but not a big enough one. What makes her tick? And what could she possibly think she can do to him? He sits late in his office looking into her past without knowing what he’s looking for. He gets snatches of arguments, frigid silences, dusty piles of never-read cards on the mantle. And he gets the worst headache of his life.

It starts as a throbbing migraine and gets worse from there. Gradually darkness creeps into the edges of his left eye until he can’t see through it at all; in his right, sickly flashes of vivid gray-green-purple. He can’t bear to move or do _anything_ so he lies face-down on his desk with the lights off, whimpering softly. In time with the pounding of his blood, everything he’s seen flashes in front of his eyes. Gertrude’s face. Gertrude’s white-knuckled grip on a pen. Gertrude’s sensible shoes clacking painfully down stone stairs.

And since he’s given up sleeping there’s nothing he can do but wait out the night.

 

-

 

On Monday just before lunch all the power in the Magnus Institute goes out. This is quite inconvenient for the people who work in the basement levels, and since it will take a while to get an electrician in to look at it everyone is given the day off. Gertrude needs to wait for her assistants to get back from Hounslow, so she sits and does her reading on the steps of the Institute. Around two in the afternoon Bouchard comes stalking round the side of the building looking harried, sees Gertrude sat there, and gives her an evil look. His whole body is tense in a way that suggests pain, although why he should be in pain she has no idea. Maybe he’s given himself a headache from shouting at the electrician. “Have you resolved the problem?” she asks. “I do rather miss having access to the library.”

“Very funny,” he snarls. “As if I didn’t know this is your doing.”

“If it were, you would have been amply warned,” says Gertrude, now pretending to read her statement. “But I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about cutting power to a whole building. I just about know the word fusebox, if not what one looks like. And I’d rather be getting on with my work in any case.”

“ _Nothing_ was wrong with the fusebox,” he says, and turns on his heel.

“Hm,” says Gertrude quietly to herself. “Imagine that.”

Janet returns with the trainees in tow an hour or so later and asks why Gertrude is sitting on the front steps.

“The power is out,” Gertrude tells them all. “Dreadful business. The electrician can’t find anything wrong at all. You may as well leave your notes with me and go home for the day, everyone else has.”

“Is it going to be back tomorrow?” asks David, who is most likely looking for an excuse not to come in.

“I bet that depends,” says Janet. “Maybe a better question would be, is this the kind of thing worth taking a statement from the electrician?” Gertrude merely raises her eyebrows at Janet, who laughs. “Right. Won’t bother. We’ll be in tomorrow. Eh, David?”

“Yeah?”

The next day the power is back on, but it goes out again on Thursday. Bouchard doesn’t even bother calling anybody this time, just storms straight down to Gertrude’s office, where she’s collecting the statements and notes she’ll need by the light of a torch she’s pointed at the ceiling. “Stop it,” he snaps, barely visible in the doorway except the gleam of his eyes and the pale shape of his white shirt. “And don’t pretend you aren’t behind it, it’s a waste of both our time.”

“Have you found a way to fire archivists yet?”

“No, and I’m not going to.”

“Perhaps you can have them transferred to the library, then.”

“Your assistants are worse than useless and I’m not going to pay them to get in the way of the real librarians. Your petty power play, you deal with them.”

“What,” says Gertrude, “are you going to do? Put a reprimand in my assessment?”

“Obviously not. I’m going to dock your assistants’ pay. There’s no point threatening _you_ , after all.”

“I’ll tell them directly,” says Gertrude coldly. “Excuse me.” She takes her torch and pushes past him into the hall.

The power goes out again on Tuesday. Gertrude’s assistants are being surprisingly good sports about being on half pay, if only because she’s also halved their hours and advised them to get second jobs. Janet still comes in full-time. “I figure he’ll eventually realize he can’t get to you that way,” she says. “It won’t be forever. Plus, I don’t fancy looking for a new job right now.”

But Gertrude is afraid Bouchard will realize that he simply hasn’t gone far enough. This is only a war of attrition for Gertrude, because the only resource Bouchard has to lose is one that may make him more dangerous when he does—his patience. Gertrude stands to lose much more, and he’s not stupid enough to miss that forever. What this means is that she needs to show herself to be more ruthless than he is, and quickly. She makes a phone call.

On Wednesday several people from the library complain that the air conditioning is on too high, but they complain quietly, in small huddles of one outside the staff rooms. No-one seems to be able to look each other in the eye, and even Gertrude finds the Institute a lonely, cheerless place. David and Annabelle, when she goes in to ask them to get over to the library, are sitting ten feet apart in the shared office, not talking to each other, both hunched in on themselves. She goes for lunch to get away from the oppressive atmosphere of the Institute. When she comes back her desk has been ransacked and the small coin Nathaniel gave her is missing.

That’s fine. She has more of them.

She spends the next few days printing up flyers reading TELL THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE YOUR GHOST STORIES! CASH REWARD! Annabelle and David are equal to putting up flyers, at least.

 

-

 

“Our head archivist has been making trouble.”

“Oh, yes? I can’t see what you want me to do about it. Surely you have ways of making her behave.”

“I’m not asking you to stop her. I’m just asking you to stop _helping_ her.”

“Hah! Oh, I’m not helping her any more. Rather, I’ve given her all the help she needs. It’s out of my hands.”

“ _Why_? You’re part owner of the Institute! You have no reason to want it to fail.”

“The Institute is much more resilient than you give it credit for, my boy. And if you can’t match that resiliency, what use are you?”

 

-

 

The cash reward isn’t large, but it still attracts a great number of people wanting to take advantage. Many of them have made so little effort that there’s hardly anything to write down (in which case the assistants have been instructed to give them 50p and see them off), but there’s still an influx of statements that need researching. And nearly all of them false. But of course Gertrude must research them all carefully to make sure.

It’s good that she does, because one of them is a short letter embedded in a ghost story that seems to have been copied out of a book.

> _…I didn’t like the look of the hitchhiker, but I reluctantly leaned over to open the door. He thanked me and got in. And then he said, “Why don’t I tell a story to pass the time?_
> 
> _“Sorry, Archivist,” he began. “The little Eye has been watching too closely. Keep note of how his power grows, because it might soon be too great for you to manage. I’m not having any of my people arrested just to annoy him, so enjoy your lights. Good luck, consider the favor repaid, and keep in mind that I don’t work for free.”_
> 
> _I sat listening with gooseflesh slowly crawling up my arms, but I couldn’t make myself move or speak until he had finished…_

Rather than burning it, which might now be enough to attract _the little Eye’s_ attention, she rips it into pieces and flushes them down the toilet. It’s time to start considering more drastic measures. He may not have any sort of plan or objective now, but some day he will—and it will not be kind to her or her assistants.

Gertrude has never been one for drastic measures. Confrontational, sometimes, when she knows she is right, but the most drastic thing she has ever done was inconveniencing the staff of the Magnus Institute two days a week for about a month.

The thing is: she doesn’t want Elias Bouchard to be Head of the Magnus Institute, and she suspects that that, too, is a position for life.

She has never killed anyone before.

As if thinking of murder somehow summoned her, Gertrude looks up at a knocking to find Mary Keay standing in the doorway. Mary smiles when she looks up, eyes crinkling in delight. “Gertrude! What’s this I hear about cash for ghost stories? Has the Magnus Institute really fallen so far?”

“It isn’t any of your business how I conduct mine.”

“Even if I want to tell a story?”

“Whatever stories you have to tell, I don’t want to hear them. I’m sure they’re uniformly horrible.”

“Come now, Archivist, surely you won’t turn away a genuine statement. _Can’t_ , even.”

“You can ask one of my assistants for help if you’re that keen to make a statement.”

“I love it when you entrust me with your things,” says Mary happily, and before Gertrude can do more than half-rise from her chair she has wandered off. Surely she won’t try to kill anyone _in_ the Institute.

On second thought, only an idiot would bet a life on being able to predict what Mary Keay is going to do. Gertrude gets up and hurries after her.

She finds Mary already in the assistants’ office, as if she knew where to find it, playing the well-intentioned but lost new mother for David.

“Where’s Annabelle?” Gertrude asks him.

“Oh, in the library, I think?”

“Hm. All right. I will have to accompany you, then. The recording rooms are _this_ way.”

David comes close while they’re walking to murmur, “I’ve taken plenty of statements before. And I know you’ve got more important things to do.”

“This woman is very dangerous, and I don’t want anyone alone with her.” Gertrude snaps her mouth shut on the impulse to drive the point home and tell him that Mary has already killed one of her assistants. Perhaps once the threat isn’t so immediate. David is not a very good actor.

He waits until he’s turned away from her to roll his eyes, at least.

“Do you have any weapons or means of harming a person right now?” Gertrude asks Mary, outside the recording room.

She smiles sweetly. “If you’re creative enough, anything can be used to harm a person.”

“ _Do you_?”

“Oh, all right,” she sighs, and drops her purse theatrically by the door.

“ _Anything else?_ ”

“No, honestly, where else would I be keeping it? Tucked into my underthings?”

Gertrude does her best to ignore her and waits outside, watching through the window. She doesn’t need Mary to be able to find her in her nightmares, too.

 

When she reads it later, Mary’s statement is an irritating mess of tangents and subtle digs at Gertrude. Unfortunately it has the potential to get her an important new source of information if she can find the bookshop Mary kept making purposefully vague allusions to. She sends Janet after it with instructions to be subtle, keep an eye out for anyone following her, and perhaps it would be wise to disguise herself, too.

Janet rolls her eyes, smiling. “Oh, honestly. This isn’t my first day of primary school. I can handle myself. I’ll be back in the afternoon, don’t fret too much over me.”

Gertrude watches her leave, but without watching. It has suddenly struck her that nobody has been this openly fond of her since she stopped going to family Christmases seven years ago. Suddenly she wants to call Janet back and send someone more disposable in her place, someone Gertrude won’t miss. That’s stupid, of course. No human life is disposable, not even someone like Elias Bouchard. _To be disposed of_ , yes. _Disposable_ , no.

But she would feel better if it were David out there.

She busies herself in the library but checks her watch too often. Premonitions of doom should mean nothing to her, for heaven’s sake. She isn’t whatever Bouchard is, an eye turned on all of time and space. She cannot see the future, so why can’t she convince herself that she isn’t feeling it in her gut?

In the afternoon one of the librarians stops in to tell her the Head wants to see her, so irritably she gets up and goes to his office.

“What is it now?” she snaps.

“I was just wondering if you might like to reconsider your campaign of uselessness,” he says. “It’s already such a dangerous job as it is.” She gives him the look she feels that deserves. “No? No, I thought so. Are you aware of exactly how Mark died? Did you see it?”

She’s silent.

“Distantly,” he says, in imitation of her own voice. A strange chill runs through her.

“You know he was posing as one of the sacrifices. A stupid, brave idea, but one you had no hand in. I’m not sure you appreciate what was to happen to them. You were too far away when he walked into the cloud of wasps to see them landing on him, plunging in their ovipositors, and laying eggs under his skin.” Gertrude’s jaw is clenched and her eyes fixed on the wall behind him. He seems almost entranced. “The larvae developed startlingly fast and began chewing their way out within half a minute. He was already in unbearable pain, his fingers shaking almost too hard to grip the lid of the kerosene. Yet somehow he unscrewed it. It fell from his nerveless hand and onto the ground, spilling over his shoes. He didn’t even fall to his knees because he was concentrating every ounce of willpower into reaching for his lighter, even with those fat worms chewing through the tendons of his hands. Every movement his fingers made was agony.” Gertrude can’t breathe. All she can do is wait like a statue being filled with his pain, that pain and horror evident in Bouchard’s voice. “The agony of the fire was almost a relief,” he says, half-laughing, half-afraid. “Almost. His cooking flesh was not something he thought he would ever smell, and mixed with the hissing pops of frying wasp larvae. The inferno roared up around him—that filth always was so flammable—and he felt it as his clothing melted to his skin. He didn’t have a chance to pass out from the pain, it was over so quickly, but to him it felt like an eternity. Do you want to know what he was thinking as he died?”

Gertrude can’t open her shaking jaw.

“No,” he says for her. Her horror trembles in his voice. “Don’t say anything.”

“He was thinking that at least you were safe. You and dear Janet.” And then he leans forward across his desk. “You don’t want me to tell you what happened to Janet, do you, Gertrude?”

He closes his eyes, and a shudder goes through him. “No.”

“And if you’re good, I won’t.”

Gertrude manages to swallow. Manages one breath.

“Get out of my office,” whispers Bouchard, covering his face with one hand.

Gertrude’s stiff legs walk out of the office.

They take her all the way to her own office before she collapses in the corner and, for the last time in her life, begins to sob.

**Author's Note:**

> A shadow of laughter like a sigh,  
> Dead sorrow's kin;  
> So rang, thrown down, the devil's die  
> That won Faustine.


End file.
